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Hi Michael-
These are comments on A Revolution Like This….
This was a great blog and then I got to read further on your links. Iceland – isn’t there something that we can all learn here???? Austerity doesn’t work…the answer to failing banks is to nationalize them and to incarcerate those responsible… don’t make taxpayers pay for the folly of investors….don’t send your young people to American business school.

One correction. The American Revolution wasn’t. A revolution is where the people at the bottom overthrow the people at the top. Like the French Revolution. These tend to be bloody… The American “events” were actually one set of elites throwing out the representatives of another set of elites (English business interests and their royal buddies). The so-called American “Revolution” was led by Tidewater slaveholding plantation owners who each owned A LOT of slaves even as they talked about how all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

At least Washington freed his slaves upon his death and left them take their tools. Jefferson never freed his slaves because they were part of the “property” needed to pay off his huge debts (he lived high on the hog). What a hypocrite.

There’s merit in what you say about the American War of Independence, but I still think it qualifies for the word revolution by what happened in the Congress at Philidelphia. Even though the military events on the field were represented through most of the war by the groups you indicate, the Continental Congress (at the same time) was requiring the unanimous consent by vote of all 13 colony delegations in order to ratify the Declaration of Independence. A no vote by any colony would have killed it. That’s a courageous, revolutionary action in my estimation.

The delegates to the congress were not all rich, and their occupations were diverse, including lawyers, soldiers, farmers, ministers and even a few polyglots like Franklin. They had to work many compromises to the document to achieve the agreed-upon unanimity in consent, some of which required later resolution in the Civil War. The “revolution” was to declare legal separation from the colonizing power, and sign and explain the reasons openly in order to legitimize what was only hoped for at the time – the sucessful conclusion of the war of attrition Washington was leading in the field. The signers of the Declaration were publicly putting their necks in a rope, from desks, something I can’t imagine legislators doing now.

Great article, Mikey. I guess Christmas means many things to many people, but there’s one thing we all have in common with this season – it costs the little people a lot of money and makes the big people even more money.